This is akin to "gaming" culture. I'll circle around to the definition in a moment, but let's look at these two side-by-side. Hacker culture was developed by geeks and outcasts; people building communities based on their own niches interests. This mirrors gaming culture, especially that of the 80's and 90's. You had User Groups, meetups, computer clubs, etc. and those morphed into bulletin boards, forums, and spread to communities all-throughout the web and world. Much like gaming, it wasn't mainstream, it wasn't super popular, per say. There were attempts to make it more mainstream (e.g. Hackers the movie) but for the most part it was relegated to a niche group because of the steep learning curve. Much in the same way certain communities silo'd themselves in gaming based on difficulty curves, cheats, tricks, etc. Eventually, the communities became more mainstream; the barrier to entry became much lower for both. Now, anyone with access to a computer and 10 minutes on Code Academy is one social justice brownie point away from being a developer; much in the same vain, anyone playing Bejeweled or Hello Kitty Island Adventure considers themselves part of the gaming community. Consoles and Computers used to cost a mint; so it meant those using the tech were damn sure to enjoy it, learn from, and create communities around it. Not everyone could afford an NES in the 80's, but look at how even impoverished people in the US can afford an Xbox or PS4. The same goes for computing; not everyone could drop $1500-2500 for a PC in the 80's and early 90's, but now, used PCs, hand-me-downs, tablets, smartphones, or Chromebooks are good enough. Both of these demand skill, time, and practice and not everyone is willing to put in the work. These people, yearning to be important or wanting to lower the bar of difficulty cry foul and try to mold and shape these communities to make them more welcoming to those too lazy to put in the effort. You see this with fighting game tournaments, e-sports, game development, etc. This is their way of nerfing these communities, gentrifying them to make them more accessible to their ilk.

A hacker is someone who looks for ways to manipulate a system. That's the simplest definition. Whether it be Captain Crunch and the telephony systems of the 70's, Kevin Mitnick and early network systems, or security researchers hunting for bugs in hardware / software. These people aren't concerned with identity politics, but rather freedom of information and exploiting / discovering flaws in systems. It's a dated term for a bygone era. Those days are long gone, mostly due to the corporatization of the computer world and influx of Wall Street / Venture Capital. It was a punk culture and we all know those aren't clean and easily marketable. So now we're left with the remnants of these communities being labeled dangerous, bigoted, or crazy "old white men" who are out of touch with the way the world works today. People like Eric S. Raymond, Linus Torvalds, John "Maddog" Hall, Theo de Raadt, or Bruce Perens.

Why did it take so long to affect the original hacker sphere? Monetization and the difficulty to infiltrate due to talent and the years of practice needed to compete in this sector. Most of these communities weren't built around making money; but instead it was more of a hobby, interest, life style, or ethos. Many worked in open source, and while it's much different today, FLOSS communities were seen as a bastardization of software from many of the tech giants that dominated the 90's and early 00's. Writing software, especially writing well, takes years to do properly. Not to mention, the rigor involved with kernel development would drive most crazy. So your average blue-haired idiot off the street with a degree in Feminist studies isn't going to be able to enter, let alone compete, in this world. So how do they enter this world without having the skills or knowledge? They write codes of conduct, block bots, etc. Instead of contributing actual code, they do some piss-poor manifesto text file or some basic level markup. They then cry foul at the number of white men in these communities (never mind the fact Asian communities are now dominating the development world) and promote their solutions as a way to sanitize their projects and attract more women and minorities (again, never mind the fact Indians, Chinese, Japanese, are creating just as much if not more than white Americans). Or, in the case of Ruby, Python, Opal, Libreboot, and Node, they claim there's a problem with harassment or with terminology. They then try to insert their beliefs in an attempt to subvert the work done by actual engineers and developers.... because, you know, you gotta put that worthless degree to work somewhere...

You've seen the narratives around gaming, comics, tabletops, etc. It's now reared it's ugly head into Kernel development (Linux adopting the CoC), tech jargon (donglegate, python master/slave, IDE master/slave), and Open Source (Projects adopting CoC or similar codes of conduct). The radical authoritarians have now infected every space I hold dear. I don't want to live in this timeline anymore. I just wanted to play games, tinker with computers, develop some cool applications, and read some comics.